This last week we had two new resident artists come to stay. The girl on the left is Michelle Loa Kum Cheung and the girl on the right is Jessica Raby.
Jessica is currently getting her MA in Aberystwyth and is studying film. She collects things from nature and isolates outside of their natural environment to film and photograph. This is her in her studio filming a flower she picked around the area while here.
Michelle is a painter and uses a unique technique where she burns into wood and uses oil paint to paint around and inside her burnt drawings. Right now she is doing a commission for a restaurant which is a tetraptych (painting that has four parts). Go to Michellelkc.com to see more of her work.
And there is me. I focus mainly on using a combination of acrylic paints and colored pencils on canvas. I have been enjoying exploring this mixed media technique more and more and have enjoyed focusing on people as my subjects. Since I have been in Wales I have been using Welsh folklore to tell stories in my paintings and I have had so much fun trying my hand at allegorical paintings!
This week we decided it would be fun to do a critique with each other in our studios. I haven't done a critique since college and it was so fun to be a part of something like this again! First we gathered in the attic and watched what Jessica had filmed so far on the projector.
We loved the flower that she had filmed slowly spinning as it hung from her studio ceiling. The light created beautiful shadows on it and I loved how mesmerizing it was to watch. She talked about her work and we also took a look at some of her past films. She appreciated our input and used it to help her plan out her direction for the rest of her stay here. If you want to see more of her work go to www.jess-raby.com.
Next we looked at what Michelle had painted so far on her panels and she talked about her process and how she got into pyrography. She talked about what kind of subjects she paints and how she is drawn to landscapes but likes to play with scale in her paintings in a surrealistic way.
The time came for my critique. I talked about my different paintings that I have painted in Wales and how I incorporated Welsh folklore into them. We talked about some of the commonalities that the paintings have with each other and the parts of the paintings that worked better than others.
Discussing art with each other was so fun and we all benefitted so much from our discussions. Here are a few more detail shots from another painting I did.
